Saturday, 28 February 2009

Did we really expect anything more?

Yep, that huge crater in the centre of our city is DEFINATELY NOT going to be worked on this year according to the T&A and Westfield.

I've lost count about how many years its been since the bulldozers came in, i think I've been to university (with a year out) in the time it's taken to get things moving. (and in fact i think it maybe longer!)

If the Council had not been so incompetent with the building contracts, we would have had this shopping up and running well before the recession which would have come as a relief to everyone and providing much needed jobs for the area, AND actually bringing in new businesses.

As it says in the report, it is no surprise that Westfield are not going to crack on with the expensive building work, especially with the recession worsening.

But what can the Council do to bring businesses back to Bradford to provide jobs? It would be UKIPs policy to return control of business rates to local councils, handing back some of the power from central government, which would allow us to control direct taxation on businesses.

Bradford is going to close down unless we get new businesses to move in, but there is little the council can do to encourage this. Bradford is losing custom to Leeds and Halifax and winning it back is going to be hard, especially in a recession.